Mukaab on SAUDI VISION 2030 Intelligence Platform

New Murabba and The Mukaab: downtown Riyadh cost, design, timeline, and risk

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

New Murabba is PIF’s planned new downtown in northwest Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The New Murabba project is developed by New Murabba Development Company, a PIF company, and is anchored by The Mukaab, a planned 400m x 400m x 400m cube-shaped landmark. As of May 26, 2026, the clean answer for “new murabba news today” is not that the district is open. It is that New Murabba remains an active official project with design, infrastructure, technology, sustainability, and partnership updates, while Reuters-syndicated reporting in January 2026 said construction of The Mukaab beyond excavation and pilings was suspended for financing and feasibility reassessment [S1], [S2], [S3], [S11].

The Graveyard of Giga-Projects: A Forensic Audit of Every Vision 2030 Project That Failed, Flopped, or Quietly Died

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Vision 2030 Failed Projects: The Line, Mukaab, Trojena

This audit tracks the Vision 2030 projects that were cancelled, suspended, scaled back, or quietly stripped of their original thesis, from The Line and the Mukaab to Trojena, Oxagon, and Jeddah Tower. The pattern is visible only when the entire giga-project portfolio is examined at once: projects with standalone economics survived, while projects dependent on the integrated megacity thesis broke first.

What follows is the forensic record of what the Kingdom built, what it abandoned, what it spent, and what it has left to show for the most expensive construction programme in modern history.

The Mukaab: Saudi Arabia's $50 Billion Cube That Built Nothing

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mukaab suspended: Saudi Arabia’s $50 billion cube moved from a 2030 showcase to a 2040 question mark, with only early site work and roughly $100 million in contracts visible against the headline plan.

On 15 February 2023, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled New Murabba — a $50 billion redevelopment of downtown Riyadh centred on the Mukaab, a structure that would be the world’s largest single-built edifice. The Mukaab would be a cube: 400 metres on each side, enclosing approximately 2 million square metres of interior floor space. The interior would contain a dome — the largest AI-powered display on the planet — observed from a ziggurat rising over 300 metres within the cube’s shell. The structure would be, in the promotional material’s own framing, “large enough to fit 20 Empire State Buildings.”